U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s last day turned out to be Monday, with the embattled chief administrator unexpectedly leaving before his replacement has been found.
DeJoy, who was appointed by the USPS Board of Governors during Trump’s first term of office, announced his retirement in February. He had indicated he would remain on board until a successor was found to be as “helpful as possible in facilitating a transition that is least impactful to the Postal Service and the American people and that positions my successor and the Postal Service for long-term success.”
DeJoy’s early departure does not signal the end for the controversial Delivering for America plan, however, which has attracted widespread criticism in Wyoming.
The plan aims to save around $36 billion over a 10-year period by reducing work hours, consolidating services, and changing the national network that delivers mail to Americans. The plan is expected to speed up mail deliveries to metropolitan areas — but will sacrifice rural mail delivery in the process.
Delivering For America is set for a phase one rollout on April 1. Among the biggest changes to service on that date will be the Regional Transportation Optimization (RTO) plan. Under this, any post office that is 50 miles or more from a Regional Processing and Distribution Center will no longer have afternoon mail pickup. Save The Post Office, a websitewhich tracks post office closings and consolidations, has provided a tool for examining how Delivering For America’s RTO may apply to mail, based on ZIP Code pairs.
Wyoming not only doesn’t have a single Regional Processing and Distribution Center under Delivering for America, the entire state is 50 miles or more from the nearest such facility, meaning it has no post offices under the plan that appear eligible for afternoon pickups.
While it was announced Cheyenne and Casper will keep more of its mail processing capacity than previously proposed under Delivering For America, the overall plan to “optimize” transportation remain, and still apply statewide in Wyoming.
Wyoming’s Congressional delegation and Cowboy State Daily have been asking postal officials whether afternoon pickups will continue for postal offices less than 50 miles from Cheyenne and Casper, but details on what the announced changes to plans for Cheyenne and Casper mail processing actually mean for Wyoming mail have been scant.
U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman on Monday said she is not stopping her fight for rural postal service in America, indicating she believes there is still a concern for mostly rural Wyoming.
“The Delivering for America plan falls far short of its name,” she said in the post. “These failed policies must end with this leadership, so we can restore reliable postal service for rural America.”
U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, too, indicated that some problems remain.
“The people of Wyoming felt the sting of the USPS’ misguided policies under President Biden,” Lummis said. “While I wish former Postmaster General DeJoy the best, I am looking forward to a USPS that serves rural states like Wyoming, not treats us like an afterthought.”
U.S. Sen. Barrasso’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
DOGE Agreement
Among DeJoy’s last actions as Postmaster General was an agreement with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to “assist us in identifying and achieving further efficiencies,” DeJoy said in one of his last letters to Congress.
DOGE has not been given unfettered access to employee data, DeJoy added in a follow-up letter to Congress, just data required to address specific issues.
That data, according to DeJoy’s letter, includes retirement plans, workers’ compensation costs, unfunded congressional mandates costing between $6 to $11 billion, the renewal of retail center leases, counterfeit postage, and opportunities for the USPS to provide more service to other federal agencies.
DeJoy also took a swing at the Postal Regulatory Commission in the letter, which he said is an unnecessary, duplicative agency that has “inflicted over $50 billion in damage to the Postal Service by administering defective pricing models and decades old bureaucratic process that encumber the Postal Service.”
And he highlighted the postal service’s universal service mandate, which means the postal service is required to provide prompt and reliable mail service to every household in America. That mandate has meant DeJoy can’t eliminate “certain money losing services,” which generally includes many, if not most, rural mail deliveries.
The Postal Regulatory Commission had issued an advisory opinion that said DeJoy’s plan has not adequately taken into account the impact to rural states. The opinion even highlighted a particularly egregious example of what’s ahead for mail in the Cowboy State, in which a letter from Central Wyoming travels through four processing centers in three different states.
“The specific efforts that I have engaged the DOGE/GSA team to assist us with have long been initiatives of the Delivering for America Plan, designed to improve overall our operations, enhance the marketability of our products, and dramatically reduce costs and grow revenue,” DeJoy wrote. “While we have accomplished a great deal, these specific initiatives, for which we have sought assistance from the DOGE team for a variety of reasons remain undone.”
DeJoy had also sought, independent of DOGE, the voluntary early retirement of up to 10,000 postal workers, to further trim workforce.
Change Ahead
DeJoy’s departure comes amid a time of great change, one in which the future of the postal service as an independent agency is being publicly questioned.
President Donald Trump has publicly talked about privatizing the postal service in various national media reports, although he appeared to change his mind about it not long after that. More recently, he has talked about transforming the service by folding the independent agency into the Commerce Department, suggesting it could then assist with things like the Census or Social Security. Both approaches would require an act of Congress to be legal.
Wyoming’s Congressional delegation did not respond to questions about privatizing the postal service, but postal workers have been vocal lately about such options and say it would not be good for rural states like Wyoming.
“Privatization would raise the prices among all carriers, because they currently rely on the USPS so much,” branch president of the Cheyenne mail handling unit Ricci Roberts told Cowboy State Daily. “And they would also be able to legally discriminate against the rural population in pricing, because there would no longer be a (universal service) mandate preventing it.”
Roberts suggested that England’s privatization is a model showing how that could play out with “reduced service across the board, but particularly for rural, elderly, and disabled customers.”
Several rallies were held across the nation to fight back against the idea of privatization, including one in Casper.
American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein said he believed DeJoy had been forced out ahead of schedule to facilitate such plans.
“Privatized postal services will lead to higher postage prices and lower quality of service to the public,” he said. “Our union will continue to lead the fight to ensure that the USPS stays in the hands of its rightful owners — the people — and that it continues to provide quality universal service that the public both relies on and deserves.”
Lorenz also urged the USPS Board of Governors to swiftly hire DeJoy’s replacement and ensure that it is someone who “respects the rights of hardworking postal workers, and who will not break up and sell off this service that delivers to 169 million addresses.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
